Why YSK: Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it. It’s better to find a free alternative, both for your wallet and for your peace of mind.
Introducing: ViMusic
Downloads: https://github.com/vfsfitvnm/ViMusic
- Free and open source
- No ads/trackers
- Song lyrics
- Music from both YouTube Music and YouTube
- Weights 2MB or so
- Beautiful UI and amazing UX
Cons: no high kbps streaming support
DO NOT TRY TO DOWNLOAD THE APP FROM ANY SOURCE OTHER THAN THE ONES LISTED IN THEIR GITHUB PAGE. They are malware.
Potential bias: I’m a developer at Spotify.
“Spotify forces you either to pay, listen to ads or to find unofficial, potentially dangerous versions to use it.”
I don’t think the company forces you to do anything. It is their business model, how they can provide copyrighted music to you and have a share of the pie too.
I’d say the very idea that Spotify is forcing you to pay with time and attention or money so you can have music conveniently streamed to your devices is a testament to the company’s success. It created this business model and fulfilled an apparently basic need to the point you think that charging for it is unfair.
But “forcing” is too much. You can always buy discs, digital downloads and so.
Spotify took an existing thing and made it convenient and worse at the same time. How long before we are just listening to AI music? Since their cost is the artists…it’s only a matter of time.
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I’d also add that I wish Spotify paid the musicians better. Even relative to other platforms Spotify is pretty bad about that. Of course if you want to support the musician it’s always better to buy merch and music and stuff directly from them, but that isn’t really an excuse for streaming platforms to pay them so poorly. And I’m not suggesting that Spotify should just give the musician everything of course. They should get their cut too. But perhaps something even slightly more reasonable would be appreciated.
I like Bandcamp because of this, and their app has really improved over the last year with the addition of ques and playlists.
I’ve been mostly using newpipe for the same purpose but this one looks great too. Thanks!
Just pay for Spotify… £10 for access to almost every song ever published. People need to appreciate how good they have it.
Adverts like this post shouldn’t be a think in “YSK”. It makes no sense.
This app is literally just music piracy in a fancy shell anyways. Since there’s no YouTube ads displayed, artists get nothing. Think Spotify is bad at paying artists? Try… piracy…?
That’s fair, but I am curious how much of streaming revenue go towards the artists and how much goes towards the labels.
That isn’t up to Spotify, all money goes to the labels and then the labels and artists negotiate their share. They’ve got a good site actually: https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/
But did you know that when Spotify negotiated streaming rights from the labels, the labels only agreed if they could take an ownership stake in Spotify. Then the labels insisted on LOWER streaming fees for themselves. This shifts their income to come from their Spotify stake, which they don’t have to pay to artists.
